Telecom
New Instagram Campaign to Raise Awareness and Help Protect Teens from sextortion Scams
Instagram has announced measures to further protect people from sextortion scam, including hiding follower and following lists from potential sextortion scammers, preventing screenshots of certain images in DMs, and rolling out our nudity protection feature globally
Sextortion is a horrific crime, where financially-driven scammers target young adults and teens around the world, threatening to expose their intimate imagery if they don’t get what they want. Today, we’re announcing new measures in our fight against these criminals – including new safety features to further help prevent sextortion on our apps, building on protections already in place.
New safety features to disrupt sextortion
Meta is announcing a range of new safety features designed to further protect people from sextortion and make it even harder for sextortion criminals to succeed.
Now, we’re making it harder for accounts showing signals of potentially scammy behavior to request to follow teens. Depending on the strength of these signals – which include how new an account is – we’ll either block the follow request completely, or send it to a teen’s spam folder.
Sextortion scammers often use the following and follower lists of their targets to try and blackmail them. Now, accounts we detect as showing signals of scammy behavior won’t be able to see people’s follower or following lists, removing their ability to exploit this feature. These potential sextorters also won’t be able to see lists of accounts that have liked someone’s posts, photos they’ve been tagged in, or other accounts that have been tagged in their photos.
Soon, we’ll no longer allow people to use their device to directly screenshot or screen record ephemeral images or videos sent in messages. This means that if someone sends a photo or video in Instagram DM or Messenger using our ‘view once’ or ‘allow replay’ feature, they don’t need to worry about it being screenshotted or recorded in-app without their consent. We also won’t allow people to open ‘view once’ or ‘allow replay’ images or videos on Instagram web, to avoid them circumventing screenshot prevention.
We’re constantly working to improve the techniques we use to identify scammers, remove their accounts and stop them from coming back. When our experts observe patterns across sextortion attempts, like certain commonalities between scammers’ profiles, we train our technology to recognize these patterns. This allows us to quickly find and take action against sextortion accounts, and to make significant progress in detecting both new and returning scammers. We’re also sharing aspects of these patterns with the Tech Coalition’s Lantern program, so that other companies can investigate their use on their own platforms.
Finally, after first announcing the test in April, we’re now rolling out our nudity protection feature globally in Instagram DMs. This feature, which will be enabled by default for teens under 18, will blur images that we detect contain nudity when sent or received in Instagram DMs and will warn people of the risks associated with sending sensitive images. We’ve also worked with Larry Magid at ConnectSafely to develop a video for parents, available in the Meta Family Center’s Stop Sextortion page, that explains how the feature works.
This campaign and new safety features are in addition to our recent announcement of Teen Accounts, which gives tens of millions of teens built-in protections that limit who can contact them, the content they see and how much time they’re spending online. Teens under 16 aren’t able to change Teen Account settings without a parent’s permission.
With Instagram Teen Accounts, teens under 18 will be defaulted into stricter message settings, which mean they can’t be messaged by anyone they don’t follow or aren’t connected to. In the EU, we will start placing teens into Teen Accounts later this year and in the rest of the world Teen Accounts will be available from January.
Taking action against sextortion criminals
Last week, we removed around 1,600 Facebook Groups and accounts that were affiliated with Yahoo Boys, and were attempting to organize, recruit and train new scammers. This comes after we announced in July that we’d removed around 7,200 Facebook assets that were engaging in similar behavior. Yahoo Boys are banned under Meta’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy — one of our strictest policies — which means we remove Yahoo Boys’ accounts engaged in this criminal activity whenever we become aware of them. While we’ve been removing violating Yahoo Boys accounts for years, we’re putting new processes in place which will allow us to identify and remove these accounts more quickly.
We’ll continue to evolve our defenses to help protect our community from sextortion criminals. This includes helping teens and their families recognize these scams early, preventing potential scammers from reaching their targets, and working with our peers to fight these criminals across all the apps they use.
Nigeria’s telecom operators recorded 155, 397 fibre-cut incidents between April and May 2026, and these they blame on why internet or calls suddenly stop working.
Data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) showed fibre-cut incidents increased from 74 276 in April to a record 79 121 in May, bringing the two-month total to the highest level recorded by the industry.
This represents a 2 428% increase from the 5 934 incidents reported during the first quarter of 2026.
Vandalism remained the leading cause of fibre cuts, accounting for more than 54 000 incidents despite telecom infrastructure being designated as Critical National Information Infrastructure, a classification intended to strengthen protection of key digital assets.
Also road construction constantly damages fiber where iggers and machines tear up buried cables during road repairs or construction.
Even with all these, some state governments make it hard for companies to fix cables quickly across different areas with all manners of fees and levies.
The NCC designation provides for penalties of up to 10 years’ imprisonment for offenders, but operators continue to face widespread infrastructure damage.
Proposed solutions, including Nigeria’s Dig-Once policy and AI-powered fibre sensing technologies, have yet to achieve widespread adoption.
The NCC is developing a cost-based framework for shared underground duct infrastructure, while operators are exploring AI-powered fibre sensing technologies that can detect cable damage in real time and improve network resilience.
Nigeria is pursuing ambitious broadband targets under its National Broadband Plan and has expanded fibre deployment to about 35 000 kilometres.
However, infrastructure protection has not kept pace with network expansion, leaving subscribers vulnerable to unreliable connectivity despite continued operator investment.
Standard Bank has partnered with Helios Towers to provide a $29 million Social Documentary Credit Facility. According to the financial services company, this transaction marks Standard Bank’s first Documentary Credit Facility structured in a Sustainable Finance format.
It notes that the facility will support the procurement and importation of telecommunications infrastructure and related services across Africa.
It will also provide payment certainty to suppliers, while supporting Helios Towers’ working capital requirements and infrastructure expansion programme, the bank adds.
Structured in accordance with the Loan Market Association’s Social Loan Principles, the financing is designed to promote digital connectivity and telecommunications infrastructure development in underserved markets.
This will help Helios Towers further expand its footprint and enhance mobile network coverage and connectivity across the continent.
Helios Towers operates one of Africa’s independent telecommunications tower platforms, enabling mobile network operators to extend coverage across multiple markets.
Standard Bank notes that the facility supports the expansion of tower infrastructure and services, increased network densification and improved connectivity in underserved markets and remote regions across the African continent.
It will also drive digital inclusion and tackle the digital divide while supporting economic growth and socio-economic development.
“This transaction demonstrates the power of innovation in trade finance. By combining a first-to-market Social Documentary Credit Facility with a cross-border funding solution, Standard Bank has supported Helios Towers’ growth ambitions while helping extend digital connectivity to underserved communities across Africa,” says Benoit Samouilhan, global transaction banker at Standard Bank Corporate and Investment Banking.
According to the bank, this facility enables positive social impact by increasing and improving network coverage and connectivity in some of the world’s most remote regions.
“Reliable digital infrastructure is fundamental to Africa’s future growth and development,” says Alex Carter, group finance director at Helios Towers.
“This facility provides us with the flexibility and certainty needed to support our ongoing infrastructure investments while advancing our mission of expanding connectivity across the continent. We value our longstanding relationship with Standard Bank and look forward to building on this partnership.”
Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) will on Thursday convene a stakeholders’ consultative forum to review the draft business rules for Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) in Nigeria.
NCC
The forum, scheduled to hold at 10 a.m. at the NCC Annex Office, Mbora, Abuja, is expected to bring together telecommunications operators, industry associations and other stakeholders to provide input on the proposed regulatory framework before its finalisation.
The commission announced the event on its official social media platforms, inviting interested stakeholders to participate in the consultation process.
The engagement is part of the NCC’s efforts to strengthen the regulatory framework for MVNO operations and promote greater competition, innovation and consumer choice in Nigeria’s telecommunications sector.
Mobile Virtual Network Operators are telecommunications service providers that offer mobile services by leasing network capacity from licensed Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), rather than owning spectrum licences or telecommunications infrastructure.
The NCC has identified the MVNO licensing framework as one of its initiatives aimed at deepening competition, expanding access to telecommunications services and driving digital inclusion across the country.
The consultative forum is expected to provide stakeholders with the opportunity to review the draft business rules, make recommendations and contribute to the development of a robust operational framework for the emerging MVNO segment.
The commission is expected to issue further details on the outcome of the consultation after the meeting.
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